Thread: A shortcut to the Maclaurin series expansion?

(Not sure if this should go into the calculus section; feel free to move it.)

Question: Find the Maclaurin series for up to and including the term in x^4 where

The key gives the following answer:


I understand how they can move out and expand the parentheses binomially to get the right hand side of the equation, but there are two things that puzzle me:

1. The question asks for me to find a Maclaurin series for the expression. To me, that means finding the first derivatives and of the expression, dividing them by a factorial and multiplying by an term. This is not done here. Why does the answer given correspond to a Maclaurin series without performing these steps?
2. In which cases is it valid to do the above trick? When should one think of using it?

Originally Posted by mtpastille

Question: Find the Maclaurin series for up to and including the term in x^4 where

The key gives the following answer:


I understand how they can move out and expand the parentheses binomially to get the right hand side of the equation, but there are two things that puzzle me:

1. The question asks for me to find a Maclaurin series for the expression. To me, that means finding the first derivatives and of the expression, dividing them by a factorial and multiplying by an term. This is not done here. Why does the answer given correspond to a Maclaurin series without performing these steps?

Bad terminology. I would call it a binomial series, not a Maclaurin series.

Originally Posted by mtpastille

2. In which cases is it valid to do the above trick? When should one think of using it?

Except in the elementary case where r is a positive integer, this binomial expansion will only converge when . That is probably the only situation when you would want to use this result.

Originally Posted by mtpastille

2. In which cases is it valid to do the above trick? When should one think of using it?

Always




Edited: Sorry, I didn't see Opalg's post.